Speak Up, Stay Safe: The Future of Maritime Reporting with SeaLogs

Unlock a safer maritime future—how SeaLogs transforms reporting by giving every crew member a voice

Whether it’s faulty equipment, unsafe conditions, or a crew member not up to task, mariners should feel empowered to speak up. But all too often, they don’t—held back by fear of retaliation or the belief that nothing will change.

Despite the fact that maritime regulations mandate certain types of incident reporting, the reality on deck is that near miss reporting often falls through the cracks. And yet, those near misses are often precursors to serious accidents.

Maritime Reporting with SeaLogs - What You're Required to Report

Under most regulatory regimes, commercial operators must report:

• Accidents and injuries resulting in serious harm (e.g., as defined under MNZ’s Maritime Rule Part 19, AMSA MO 505, or USCG 46 CFR §4.05)

• Pollution incidents, including oil or hazardous substance discharges (e.g., MARPOL and associated domestic regulations)

• Equipment failures impacting safety or compliance with SOLAS, ISM, or vessel survey conditions

• Groundings, collisions, fires, and abandonment

  
  

These are not optional. They are legally mandated events that must be logged and, in most jurisdictions, reported to the national authority within 24 to 72 hours.

What You're Encouraged to Report

Just as important—but often neglected—are the near misses and unsafe acts or conditions that didn't cause immediate harm but easily could have. Regulatory frameworks like:

• The ISM Code (SOLAS Chapter IX),

• AMSA’s NSCV Part D and MO 504,

• MNZ’s MOSS framework,

• USCG’s Towing Safety Management System (TSMS), and

• UK MCA’s Workboat Code Section 4.3

strongly encourage operators to include proactive safety reporting mechanisms as part of their Safety Management System (SMS).

While these reports might not be legally mandated in every instance, they are critical to compliance audits, risk management, and crew welfare.

The Cultural Gap in Reporting

Unlike aviation, where Crew Resource Management (CRM) encourages copilots to challenge decisions for safety’s sake, maritime culture still grapples with rigid hierarchies and a lack of psychological safety.

Paper logs, fragmented email reports, and ad hoc verbal alerts don’t cut it in today’s safety-conscious regulatory environment.

Why Tools Like SeaLogs Matter

That’s where SeaLogs fits in. As a digital safety partner, it bridges the compliance gap by making both required and encouraged reporting simple, secure, and standardised.

With SeaLogs, crews can:

• Log both mandatory and voluntary safety events via desktop or mobile

• Submit anonymously or with attribution, supporting a just culture

• Securely transmit and store data, meeting audit trail and cybersecurity expectations

• Track follow-up actions and close-out responses

  
  

Replace fragmented paper/email systems with streamlined SMS integrationRegulatory Alignment Tip: MCA, AMSA, and MNZ inspectors increasingly expect operators to demonstrate “continuous improvement” in their SMS through evidence of near-miss tracking and trend analysis. SeaLogs provides the digital infrastructure to satisfy—and exceed—those expectations.

Let SeaLogs Be Your Compliance and Safety Backbone

Maritime Reporting with SeaLogs is easy! It's not just by ticking boxes, but by embedding a culture of proactive safety. Every report becomes a data point. Every near miss, a chance to avoid disaster.

Discover SeaLogs Today — and turn instinct into action, and action into accountability.